A couple of years ago the powers that be introduced random drugs testing within the police service. At any time a crack squad from HQ can descend anywhere in the force & randomly test officers for drugs. We’ve even had situations where we can’t send officers to jobs because the whole shift has been taken in for a test.

As far as I’m aware, nobody I’ve ever worked with has tested positive.

News today at there have been 27 positive tests out of 13,000. Cannabis & cocaine have apparently detected, though, according to some of the forums, some officers have been tested positive for drugs for which they have a√ā¬†prescription. Tests are usually random but can but can be targeted at individuals as a √ā¬†result of information laid against them, anonymous or otherwise.

In Britain’s largest force, the Met, they carried out 20 tests on a targeted basis & 11 officers failed the test, presumably that means that just under 50% of the targeted information was wrong?

I’m not sure what this says about the average police officer, other than a miniscule proportion have been found to have traces of √ā¬†illegal drugs in their system. Ideally, of course, you’d expect 100% to be ‘drug-free’, but given that the police are a force drawn from the public can we ever be truly free of officers who take drugs, steal, abuse power, etc, etc?

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